Prince William and Kate Middleton telefilm "awful"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Critics are panning the made-for-television movie about Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding that airs on Lifetime on April 18 and in the U.K. on April 24. But they still think it'll be a huge hit.

"There are movies so bad that they transcend awfulness. Ed Wood's 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' and 'Glen or Glenda?' perhaps, or 'Troll 2.' And then there is 'William and Kate: The Movie,'" he said. "You begin to wonder what the happy young couple have done to deserve this. It will probably be a smash."

Rushed together ahead of their April 29 wedding, the movie chronicles Prince William (Nico Evers-Swindell) and Kate Middleton's (Camilla Luddington) romance at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

It was directed by Mark Rosman and produced in the five months since the couple announced last November they would wed. A collector's edition DVD will be released after by Revolver Films.

The Guardian also notes all the inaccuracies with the movie being shot mostly around Los Angeles -- such as "mountains in the backdrop to a pheasant shoot in Gloucestershire, buses driving on the right in London, the Middletons' modern house transformed into a Californian Tudor mansion and the famous dragon boat race training that Kate Middleton once undertook on the Thames at Chiswick being transposed to the High Sierra."

Dialogue also includes lines from Prince Harry (Justin Hanlon) like, "I say, Wills. I am not the heir. I am just the spare."

London Evening Standard critic Richard Godwin writes that it's a "classic," adding that, "critics in America have panned this movie as a cheesy chick-flick, but there are positives. It is recognizably a film, in that it takes place on a screen. Events run in a forward direction."

"It is hard to pick a favorite scene," he goes on. "Is it the fashion show ('Is that Kate? She's hot')? Wills karaoke-ing Kate into forgiving him? If it had to be one, it would be where Kate leaps from her dragon boat, front-crawls over to the watching Wills and gives him a big."

Networks are planning hundreds of hours of programing to commemorate the wedding.